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The 50th anniversary of the March on Washington seemed to me largely a quasi-religious revival taken over by black clerics who ignored the secular beginnings of the protest created by A. Phillip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. Did any one else sense that? That movement was driven by nonreligious activist,students,communist, socialist and progressive trade unionist and liberal adherents in the God/Jesus cult.. The black church is for the most part culturally conservative and slow to embrace change i.e., evolution, science, and gender and same-sex equality.

After almost 4 years of trying, we finally get the chance to host the heroic human rights and child advocate Leo Igwe. Leo will be speaking on July 15th. The program will offer us the chance to hear harrowing challenges and on-going success stories. We'll also have the opportunity to understand our own part in "what's next?".

Who:

Leo Igwe's work covers key areas of interest to us all. He's been doing social justice work for almost 15 years. He'll speak on the link between human rights, civil liberties, health, education and development. The link between skeptical reason, practical activism and social justice is an ongoing project you’re invited to join in. He's in NYC for only one day. Let's turn out to welcome him.

The problems of child abuse, neglect, trafficking and suffering are well known. What is less well known is one of the causes is superstition, irrational tradition and a lack of science-based health care and education. This cripples communities and costs lives.

Now there is action that changes lives; rescuing these children from abandonment, stigmatization, mind-numbing abuse, and even murder. They are children (and adults, mostly women, often widows) who’ve been accused of witchcraft and demon possession. They suffer a loss of human rights, human dignity and hope.

Secular Humanist, skeptic and child advocate Leo Igwe is changing things. He has survived slander, harassment by politicians and police, multiple assaults, imprisonment, home invasions and hospitalizing attacks on his family members. His property has been stolen. His father was blinded, losing an eye. He lives under ongoing threats. Yet he continues to risk all and tell the truth for those who's stories would otherwise have no rational witness.

I am also on FB, Ravelry, and I have a wordpress-blog. http://Unitesense.wordpress.comI do not consider myself a "weak" Atheist simply because I am NOT 100% Sure that God-Gods-Goddess Exist or not. I simply say I don't know, but I live my life according to the "natural laws" of this planet, NOT the bible written thousands of years ago when people "knew" the earth was flat.

Greetings. I haven't checked in for a long time. I've been preoccupied with personal and other intellectual matters. I see that we have now topped 500 members. There is so much going on in the realm of black freethought that I have not had time to update my web guide or keep up with it all. How things have changed since I first founded this group. Did any of you participate in last month's Day of Solidarity for black freethinkers?

Christianity and Black Oppression: Duppy Know Who Fe Frighten presents the argument: How is it that Blacks have been Christianized for more than four hundred years and yet Blacks are stereotyped as morally and mentally inferior. At the very first encounter between Europeans and Africans, Africans were perceived as “pagan”, “heathen”, “devil worshippers”. The tool that would transform Africans, it was postulated, would be the Christian religion. In spite of over four centuries of Christianity, the perception of Blacks as morally and mentally inferior has not changed. Blacks, it would appear, carry a stigma that is genetic and therefore can be transmitted. Christianity and Black Oppression: Duppy Know Who Fe Frighten also addresses the issue as to why there has not been a radical change in the perception of Blacks in spite of centuries of Blacks’ investment of an inordinate amount of time, energy, and money in the Christian religion. Blacks were forced to surrender their African world view and adopt a Christian European dominated world view. Black history and culture are marginalized, and at times demonized, within Christianity and this is transmitted to other areas of the lives of Blacks. Indeed in this work, a comparison is made between the Dalits of India who are ostracized within the Hindu religion and Blacks who share the commonality of oppression that is based on a stigma that is supposedly genetic. In the light of the fact that Christianity is considered to be an egalitarian religion, with a God who is benevolent and who intervenes in peoples’ lives and the reality of black oppression, the question then arises as to whether blacks are subjected to “divine racism.”

Zay D. Green is currently a High School Mathematics teacher. She was also a Librarian for many years. After attending Wolmer’s High School for Girls in Kingston, Jamaica where she grew up, Ms Green pursued a Bachelor’s Degree and a Diploma in Education at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. Ms. Green also holds the M.A. in Psychology from Long Island University, New York and the M.L.S. degree from Rutgers University, New Jersey.